acts facts - institute for creation research · jake hebert says, “the answer to the question of...

Eternal PERSPECTIVE

Did Heavy Elements Come from Supernovas?

The Ever-Evolving Human Evolution Story

Do “Simple” Eyes Reflect Evolution?

ACTS&FACTS INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

ICR.org

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7


The Ever-Evolving Human Evolution Story


V O L . 4 6 N O . 9

Eternal PERSPECTIVE

page 5

page 9

page 13

page 20

Call 800.628.7640 or visit ICR.org/storeP l e a s e a d d s h i p p i n g a n d h a n d l i n g t o a l l o r d e r s . O f f e r g o o d t h r o u g h S e p t e m b e r 3 0 , 2 0 1 7 , w h i l e q u a n t i t i e s l a s t .

Dr. Henry M. Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research, spent a lifetime investigating scientific evi-

dence that confirms the Bible. Leaving his position as head of the Civil Engineering Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, he dove headlong into answering the tough ques-tions of faith and science.

Through his research, Dr. Morris formed ground-breaking scientific explanations for creation and the Flood. Dr. Morris wrote over 60 books, and The Genesis Flood,

co-written with Dr. John Whitcomb, was a primary catalyst for the creationism movement.

In Henry M. Morris: Father of Modern Creationism, you’ll see how God used this humble man to boldly proclaim the veracity of His Word. Dr. Morris’ work rebuilt Christians’ confidence in the accuracy of the Bible and turned many toward Christ for the first time. His legacy lives on in those who proclaim the authority of the Bible to a compromising church and unbelieving culture.

NEW!

$24.99

BHMMFOMC

Hardcover

“The creation/evolution

issue is, in a very real sense, the

most fundamental issue of all.”

— Dr. Henry M. Morris

“No voice in the debate over creationism and evolution has ever spoken with more clarity and insight

than that of Dr. Henry M. Morris. A brilliant scientist himself, Dr. Morris was also an outstanding theo-

logian and Bible teacher. He could speak with unassailable authority on either geology or Genesis.”

— John MacArthur, Pastor-Teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California

BACK TO GENESIS

IMPACT

EVENTS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH

FROM THE EDITOR

CONTENTS

LEGACY

ICR MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND EARTH HISTORY

RESEARCH

EVENTS

IMPACT

BACK TO GENESIS


APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH

5

3S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | A C T S & F A C T S

13

FEATURE

5 Eternal Perspective H e n r y M . M o r r i s i i i , D . M i n .

RESEARCH

9 Did Heavy Elements Come from Supernovas? V e r n o n r . C u p p s , p H . D .

IMPACT

10 The Human Brain Is “Beyond Belief” J e f f r e y p . T o M k i n s , p H . D .

BACK TO GENESIS

13 The Ever-Evolving Human Evolution Story J a k e H e b e r T , p H . D .

14 Lee Huntington’s Creation Story

17 Adaptability via Nature or Design? What Evolutionists Say r a n D y J . G u l i u z z a , p . e . , M . D .

CREATION Q & A

20 Do “Simple” Eyes Reflect Evolution? f r a n k s H e r w i n , M . a .

APOLOGETICS

21 Using Pointed Questions to Point to Answers J a M e s J . s . J o H n s o n , J . D . , T H . D .

STEWARDSHIP

22 Opportunities to Sow with ICR H e n r y M . M o r r i s i V

10

20

22

VOLUME 46 NUMBER 9

SEPTEMBER 2017

Published by

INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH

P. O. Box 59029

Dallas, TX 75229

214.615.8300

ICR.org

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Jayme Durant

SENIOR EDITOR

Beth Mull

EDITORS

Michael Stamp

Truett Billups

Christy Hardy

DESIGNER

Dennis Davidson

No articles may be reprinted in whole or in

part without obtaining permission from ICR.

Copyright © 2017

Institute for Creation Research

All Scripture quotations are from the New

King James Version unless otherwise indicated.

A C T S & F A C T S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 74

While many of us struggle with daily routines that

include high-pressure goals, chasing deadlines, and

rushing to beat the tyranny of the urgent, our best-

laid plans ultimately collide with another world—

eternity. Whether it’s through the death of a loved one, our own fail-

ing health, or another significant life event, we all come to moments

when we’re forced to stop and consider eternity.

In his feature article this month, “Eternal Perspective,” Dr.

Henry M. Morris III says, “If there is any hope of our gaining an

eternal perspective during our short lives, it surely must begin, focus,

and thrive on the ‘word of God

which lives and abides forever’

(1 Peter 1:23)” (pages 5-7). Dr.

Morris reminds us that we only

have one very short life. As be-

lievers, this compels us to con-

sider how He wants us to use the

time we’re given.

With an eternal perspec-

tive, we consider what matters

most to God. He makes it clear

that the souls of people are eter-

nal and His Word stands forever.

Our time and resources are best

spent on what He says will last.

At the Institute for Creation Research, our mission pursues

both of these God-given priorities. We use scientific evidence to

defend and confirm the absolute authority of the Bible, and we do

this to strengthen the faith of believers and reach the souls of those

blinded by evolutionary philosophy. We are increasingly concerned

that the biblical creation message is being rejected by unbelievers

and believers alike. Students are pressured to settle for questionable

explanations that discredit what God says about our beginnings.

This generation willingly accepts evolution as real science.

Decades ago, ICR founder Dr. Henry M. Morris noticed this

alarming movement of culture. In our new biography, Henry M.

Morris: Father of Modern Creationism, Rebecca Morris Barber re-

counts his efforts to impact the world with creation truth from sci-

ence and Scripture (see page 2). His life story will encourage you—

he surely lived with his sights set on eternity.

Building on Dr. Morris’ legacy, we want to equip you with ready

answers for your creation questions. In this issue, nuclear physicist

Dr. Vernon Cupps points out that “the biblical narrative provides us

with a different paradigm for the origin of the elements” (page 9).

Geneticist Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins shows us how the human brain de-

fies “any explanation that relies on chance” (page 12). Physicist Dr.

Jake Hebert says, “The answer to the question of human origins is

found not in evolutionists’ mental projections and ever-changing

evolutionary story but in the divinely inspired Genesis history—the

real story of mankind” (page 13).

As demonstrated in these articles

and thousands more on our

website ICR.org, God’s inspired

Word includes His historical re-

cord of how we all got here.

Our founder said years ago,

“If the Bible cannot be under-

stood, it is useless as revelation.

If it contains scientific fallacies,

it could not have been given by

inspiration.” The Bible is inspired

from the first word to the last. Its

truth feeds the human soul and

shows us what really matters.

So, how do we gain an eternal perspective of life? How do we

move beyond the daily activities that distract us from the soul issues?

Surrender your life to the One who made you—the Lord Jesus Christ.

Trust Him with everything, including the truth about your origins.

When you spend time with the Creator of the universe—simply talk-

ing to Him and reading His Word—He’ll show you how you can

impact souls. You’ll recognize the needs of those around you and be

better equipped to point them to the Lord. And as you search the

Bible, the Creator’s personal message to us, He’ll give you new eyes to

see His wonderful works in creation.

Jayme DurantexeCuTiVe eDiTor

Creation and an Eternal Perspective

BACK TO GENESIS

IMPACT

EVENTS


APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH

FROM THE EDITOR

CONTENTS

LEGACY


RESEARCH

EVENTS

IMPACT

BACK TO GENESIS


APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH

PERSPECTIVE“…the word of God which

lives and abides forever.”

(1 Peter 1:23)

A C T S & F A C T S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 5S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | A C T S & F A C T S

One of the more difficult disciplines of

the Christian life is cultivating an eter-

nal perspective when evaluating how

to use the resources the Lord makes

available to us.

The challenge impacts us at every level

of our lives, whether with mere personal de-

cisions or in Kingdom leadership roles the

Lord may grant as we mature. It is difficult

to apply long-term thinking in any circum-

stance, but it is especially so with the key

elements of the Kingdom. Long-term strate-

gies must include how a given decision will

impact people’s responses to the Scriptures

and/or to the multifaceted gospel message.

Nothing Physical Lasts

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat;

both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10)

There are several such broad teachings in

Scripture (Psalm 102:26; Joel 1:15; Isaiah

51:6; Matthew 24:35; Hebrews 1:10-12;

Revelation 20:11), but the essence of these

passages is a promise that the Creator will

totally purge the universe of everything that

is sin-tainted and restore a “new heavens and

a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1)

in which total righteousness is the reality

(2 Peter 3:13).

For all practical purposes, anything

people build or develop has no eternal

value—except as it relates to the matters the

Lord Himself has identified as impacting

eternity.

Eternal Words

Obviously, the essence of eternal rev-

elation to us is the written words of God, the

Holy Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16). “Heaven

and earth will pass away, but My words will

by no means pass away” is the statement that

comes from the mouth of the Lord Jesus

Himself (Matthew 24:35).

That principle appears frequently

throughout Scripture. “Forever, O LorD,

Your word is settled in heaven,” the Lamed

acrostic1 announces in Psalm 119:89, echoed

by Isaiah: “The word of our God stands for-

ever” (Isaiah 40:8). If there is any hope of

our gaining an eternal perspective during

our short lives, it surely must begin, focus,

and thrive on the “word of God which lives

and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).

Eternal Works

In one form or another, the hallmark

theme of the Bible is “Sow for yourselves

H E N R Y M . M O R R I S I I I , D . M i n .

...remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

( 1 T h e s s a l o n i a n s 1 : 3 )

PERSPECTIVE

ETERNAL PERSPECTIVErighteousness” (Hosea 10:12). If there is a

distinguishing mark of the twice-born, it is:

By this we know that we love the chil-dren of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His com-mandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:2-3)

Lest my emphasis is mistaken, there is

absolutely no connection in Scripture be-

tween works and God’s gift of salvation, but

there is every connection between a lifestyle

of righteousness and the eternal life of the

twice-born child of God. Jesus said to the

Jews who believed in Him, “If you abide in

My word, you are My disciples indeed. And

you shall know the truth, and the truth shall

make you free” (John 8:31-32).

As the angelic messenger is escorting

John through the magnificent Revelation

of Jesus Christ, there is a scene that reveals

the 144,000, the horror of the wrath of God,

and the destruction of Babylon. Tucked in

these “flash messages” is a description of the

“patience of the saints” and “those who keep

the commandments of God” (Revelation

14:12). These blessed dead are singled out

for an unusual comment: “They may rest

from their labors, and their works follow

them” (Revelation 14:13).

Yes, it sometimes costs our earthly lives

to serve the King, but we are given the high

privilege and opportunity to be “steadfast,

immovable, always abounding in the work

of the Lord, knowing that [our] labor is not

in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Eternal Attitude

As the Lord Jesus was wrapping up

His instruction to His disciples, He used a

common ranching experience to help them

understand how God would evaluate hu-

man activities to separate the “sheep” from

the “goats.”

All nations were gathered for a final

analysis of their behavior. Those who would

“inherit the kingdom prepared for you from

the foundation of the world” were set on one

side, and those who would be thrown “into

the everlasting fire prepared for the devil

and his angels” were set on the other side

(Matthew 25:35, 41).

The activity that gave evidence of the

right heart attitude was acts of kindness

(or not) to “the least of these My brethren”

(Matthew 25:32-46). Even the little things

are important to the great Creator and

Judge—since they reveal the heart behind

the deeds (1 Samuel 16:7).

Because the Word of God is eternal

and the heart drives people to obey or dis-

obey accordingly, “whoever therefore breaks

one of the least of these commandments,

and teaches men so, shall be called least in

the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does

and teaches them, he shall be called great in

the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

Eternal Behavior

During the incomparable Sermon on

the Mount, Jesus listed a series of heart atti-

tudes and their eternal consequences known

more commonly as the beatitudes (Matthew

5:3-12). From that foundational evaluation,

He spoke about our life as “light” and as

“salt” that should demonstrate to the world

what it really meant to live a godly lifestyle.

Even when godly motivation brings

about disgust and persecution from the

world, we should “rejoice and be exceeding-

ly glad, for great is your reward in heaven”

(Matthew 5:12).

Jesus gave us two parables that set the

stage for how we should evaluate our be-

havior in the light of an eternal perspective.

Matthew’s gospel records one of the stories

and Luke’s gospel the other. Both of them

speak of a wealthy man who went into a far

country to receive authority to rule. Both

teach that the journey would take a long

time and that the servants were given certain

amounts of money to do business while he

was away.

In Matthew’s account (Matthew 25:

14-30), the servants were given differing

amounts of money, “each according to his

own ability.” In Luke’s account (Luke 19:12-

27), each servant was given the same amount.

Both sets of servants were expected to use the

gifts to further the value of the owner’s prop-

erty, not their own. When the owner came

back, his evaluation of each servant would be

based on how well he had performed on the

owner’s behalf—and his reward would be in

proportion to what he had done.

Matthew notes that two of the three

servants had essentially doubled their mas-

ter’s money by trading during his absence.

Luke stressed the point that two of the ser-

vants had performed very well, although to

different returns of the master’s investment.

In both cases, however, one servant did

nothing with the owner’s money but hid it

because he was afraid that if he risked any-

thing he might lose the money.

The four servants who invested or did

good business while the master was away

were rewarded with true riches by having

authority over cities in the new realm under

the owner’s domain. The master acknowl-

edged they had been faithful in a few things

and had proven their loyalty and worth so

that they could be granted oversight over

many things.

6 A C T S & F A C T S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7

ETERNAL PERSPECTIVEThe two servants who had done noth-

ing of value on behalf of their master, how-

ever, were called lazy, wicked, and unprofit-

able. Those worthless servants were thrown

into “outer darkness,” and the original mon-

ey was given to the most productive of the

other servants.

God expects us to perform on His be-

half. We are temporarily given the opportu-

nity to work down here while the Lord is in

the “far country.” We only have one life for

a very short time until we will be brought

before our “Owner” and evaluated for our

eternal perspective.

Only One Life, ‘Twill Soon Be Past

Many of us have heard that little cou-

plet, but few know who wrote it. Permit

me to use that marvelous poem written by

C. T. Studd (1860–1931), a famous British

cricketer and missionary to China, India,

and Africa.

Two little lines I heard one day,Traveling along life’s busy way;Bringing conviction to my heart,And from my mind would not depart;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,Soon will its fleeting hours be done;Then, in “that day” my Lord to meet,And stand before His Judgement seat;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, the still small voice,Gently pleads for a better choiceBidding me selfish aims to leave,And to God’s holy will to cleave;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, a few brief years,Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears;Each with its clays I must fulfill,

Living for self or in His will;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

When this bright world would tempt me sore,When Satan would a victory score;When self would seek to have its way,Then help me Lord with joy to say;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Give me Father, a purpose deep,In joy or sorrow Thy word to keep;Faithful and true what e’er the strife,Pleasing Thee in my daily life;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Oh let my love with fervor burn,And from the world now let me turn;Living for Thee, and Thee alone,Bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,Now let me say, “Thy will be done”;And when at last I’ll hear the call,I know I’ll say “twas worth it all”;Only one life, ‘twill soon be past,Only what’s done for Christ will last.

ICR Discovery Center

All of the above is to help you under-

stand how we view the ICR Discovery Center

for Science and Earth History. Even though

the building will be absolutely beautiful, the

building itself will not last. Even though we

are trying to anticipate the best equipment

and concepts available to us today, all of that

will be outdated pretty quickly. We are try-

ing to design the structure so we can update

both the material and the equipment with

a minimum of disruption, but the “stuff” is

made out of highly organized dust, and the

information will be subject to the same Sec-

ond Law of Thermodynamics that every-

thing else is subject to.

What is not subject to decay and hu-

man finite imagination is the biblical prin-

ciples and stunning verification of the ac-

curacy and authority of the Bible. ICR is

absolutely committed to those eternal issues.

We are genuinely trying to think

eternally as we plan for this center. We are

evaluating everything we put together by

the Word of God. If there is doubt, we don’t

want it in this building. If there is opinion,

we are going to leave that for the pundits on

TV. If there is dogma or pontification, we are

consciously excising that from our planning.

Genuine science (observed, tested, re-

peated) is a wonderful tool for the Christian.

We want science in this discovery center. We

do not want guesses, philosophy, or slavish

devotion to favorite ideas to be part of this

place of discovery.

Genuine theology (“precept upon

precept, line upon line…here a little, there

a little,” Isaiah 28:10) is powerful! We want

biblical theology and the clear principles of

Scripture to flow through this ministry like

water from the Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4).

We do not want “religion” or denomination-

al creeds. We want the “word of God which

lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).

We are praying we can open this leg-

acy in fall 2018. Pray with us. Share with us.

Rejoice with us. Whether much or little, to-

gether we, “as living stones, are being built

up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to

offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to

God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).

Reference1. Each stanza of Psalm 119 begins with a consecutive letter of

the Hebrew alphabet.

Dr. Morris is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Creation Research. He holds four earned degrees, includ-ing a D.Min. from Luther Rice Semi-nary and an MBA from Pepperdine University.



BACK TO GENESIS

IMPACT

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APOLOGETICS

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S E P T E M B E R

For more information on these events or to schedule an event, please contact the ICR Events Department at 800.337.0375,

visit ICR.org/events, or email us at [email protected]

S E P T E M B E R 3

S E P T E M B E R 3, 10,

17

Tampa, FLBayside Community Church (J. Johnson) 813.837.6007

Southlake, TXCountryside Bible Church (B. Thomas, F. Sherwin) 817.488.5381

S E P T E M B E R 5

S E P T E M B E R 17

Farmers Branch, TXMetroplex Institute of Origin Science(T. Clarey) 214.615.8300

Garden City, MIMerriman Road Baptist Church (R. Guliuzza) 734.421.0472



Phoenix, AZGrand Canyon University(T. Clarey) 602.639.6087

Dallas, TXNew Life Baptist Church(Bilingual: English/Spanish)(J. Johnson, B. Thomas) 214.327.0535


Exton, PACalvary Chapel Chester Springs(J. Hebert) 610.524.5338

James J. S. Johnson, J. D., Th.D. Brian Thomas, M. S.

Dr. Jim Johnson and Mr. Brian Thomas will speak on biblical creation at New Life Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. This will be a bilingual event in English and Spanish.

Date: September 24, 2017

Schedule 9:15 a.m. Dr. Jim Johnson “Genesis on Trial” (English only)11:00 a.m. Dr. Jim Johnson “Genesis on Trial” (English and Spanish)6:00 p.m. Mr. Brian Thomas “Discovering Dinosaurs” (English and Spanish)

Location New Life Baptist Church2626 Gus Thomasson Rd.Dallas, TX 75228For information please call 214.327.0535 or visit NewLifeDallas.org

Dr. Jim Johnson y Sr. Brian Thomas hablarán sobre creación bíblica en la Iglesia Bautista Nueva Vida en Dallas, Texas. Este será un evento bilingüe en inglés y español.

Fecha: 24 septiembre, 2017

Programa9:15 a.m. Dr. Jim Johnson “Génesis en prueba” (inglés solamente)11:00 a.m. Dr. Jim Johnson “Génesis en prueba” (inglés y español)6:00 p.m. Sr. Brian Thomas “Descubriendo dinosaurios” (inglés y español)

UbicaciónIglesia Bautista Nueva Vida2626 Gus Thomasson Rd.Dallas, TX 75228Para más información llame al 214.327.0535 o visite NewLifeDallas.org

9S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | A C T S & F A C T SA C T S & F A C T S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7

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IMPACT

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APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

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V E R N O N R . C U P P S , P h . D .

H ave you ever wondered where all of Earth’s chemical ele-

ments came from? There is such a diversity of elements in

the crust—ranging from the hydrogen atom with a single

proton orbited by an electron to the uranium atom with

92 protons orbited by 92 electrons—that it is a formidable task for

science to explain where they originated and how they came to be

located in our solar system.

The traditional model holds that the light elements (those with

28 protons or less) are produced by fusion reactions within stars such

as our sun. Indeed, observations of the sun’s

photosphere and chromosphere confirm the

existence of oxygen, carbon, magnesium,

calcium, silicon, and iron. Recent measure-

ments of the neutrino flux from the sun also

seem to confirm that hydrogen fusion is the

primary mechanism for generating the sun’s

energy deep within its interior.1

However, nuclear fusion reactions

are only exothermic (producing heat) up to

the 56Fe to 62Ni element range. Beyond that,

the fusion reactions thought to produce the

heavier elements become endothermic (the

surrounding material must supply energy

for the reaction to occur). This has led mainstream science to accept

models that predict heavier elements (>62Ni) are produced during the

explosions of supernovas.

But can supernova remnants explain the abundance of heavy

elements like Pb and U in our solar system? This is an important

question since all radiometric dating methods, with the exception of

the 14C, K-Ar, and Ar-Ar methods, depend on elements with ques-

tionable origins.

Because of their vast distance from Earth, only supernovas’ at-

mosphere/ejecta can be observed, and they basically show extremely

small amounts of the heavy elements barium,2 mercury,3,4 and tech-

netium.5 This isn’t surprising since one might expect heavy elements

produced in a stellar core to stay in that core and not be directly ob-

servable or widely dispersed.

Our solar system has virtually all of the heavy elements present,

so where is the supernova remnant that supposedly generated these

elements? This question was posed to a University of Arizona gradu-

ate student, and he gave the generally accepted secular view that our

galaxy was seeded by a supernova (or perhaps several), and then our

solar system formed from a nebula 4.5 to 5 billion years ago.6 This

view, of course, assumes the deep-time paradigm for the evolution of

the universe.

It’s interesting to note that short half-life (105 to 106 years) radio-

isotopes such as 26Al and several of the Tc isotopes have been observed

in the residue from supernova.7-9 The eminent astrophysicist Donald

D. Clayton remarked that “one of the most fascinating problems in

stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis is that of separating abundance

abnormalities into those contained in the star at birth and those pro-

duced by the star during its own lifetime.”10 In

other words, Dr. Clayton is stating the obvi-

ous conundrum that secular scientists really

don’t know if the heavy elements were in the

universe from its beginning or were produced

over long time periods in stellar interiors.

The biblical narrative provides us with

a different paradigm for the origin of the ele-

ments. According to the Bible, all matter/en-

ergy was created on the first day of creation,

the earth on the second, and stars on the

fourth. It’s clear in this narrative that Earth’s

elements were created by God on the second

day before any stars came into existence.

Since there is no definitive evidence that any of the elements

with more protons than 62Ni were formed in the interiors of super-

novas, the deep-time paradigm of heavy element creation is a matter

of belief, not fact.

References1. Bellerive, A. et al. 2016. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Nuclear Physics, B. 908: 30-51.2. Bidelman, W. P. and P. C. Keenan. 1951. The BA II Stars. Astrophysical Journal. 114: 473.3. Michaud, G. 1970. Diffusion Processes in Peculiar A Stars. Astrophysical Journal. 160: 641-658.4. Zavala, R. T. et al. 2007. The Mercury-Manganese Binary Star Phi Herculis: Detection and

Properties of the Secondary and Revision of the Elemental Abundances of the Primary. Astrophysical Journal. 655 (2): 1046-1057.

5. Uttenthaler, S. et al. 2007. Technetium and the third dredge up in AGB stars* II. Bulge stars. Astronomy and Astrophysics. 463 (1): 251-259.

6. Choi, D. Where is the supernova remnant that led to our solar system? Ask an Astronomer. Posted on curious.astro.cornell.edu June 28, 2015, accessed July 7, 2017.

7. Mahoney, W. et al. 1984. HEAO 3 discovery of Al-26 in the interstellar medium. Astrophysical Journal. 286: 578-585.

8. Powell, C. S. The Strangest (and Second-Strangest) Star in the Galaxy. Discover Magazine. Posted on blogs.discovermagazine.com June 30, 2017, accessed July 7, 2017.

9. Guillen, M. Meet Tabby’s star, the weirdest sun in the galaxy. Fox News Opinion. Posted on foxnews.com July 9, 2017.

10. Clayton, D. D. 1983. Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 39.

Dr. Cupps is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at Indiana University-Bloom-ington. He spent time at the Los Alamos National Laboratory before taking a position as Radiation Physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he directed a radiochemical analysis laboratory from 1988 to 2011. He is a published researcher with 73 publications.



BACK TO GENESIS

IMPACT

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IMPACT

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APOLOGETICS

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The Human Brain Is “Beyond Belief”

J E F F R E Y P . T O M K I N S , P h . D .

The human brain, and any ani-

mal brain for that matter, is an

engineering marvel that evokes

comments from researchers like

“beyond anything they’d imagined, almost

to the point of being beyond belief”1 and

“a world we had never imagined.”2 Why

do discoveries about the brain evoke such

startling statements from secular scientists?

The main reason is that random, purpose-

less evolution and its imaginary processes

are entirely unable to account for the brain’s

seemingly infinite complexity. This article

will highlight some of what researchers have

discovered about this amazing organ and

hopefully inspire the same awe in you and

direct the glory to our infinitely powerful

Creator who engineered it all.

Perfect Optimization

A paper published in 1994 was one of

the first to reveal the complexity of the hu-

man brain through the analyses of various

animals’ nervous systems.3 The research-

ers applied the principles of combinatorial

network optimization theory used in elec-

trical engineering to see if they could fit the

“save wire” principle with brain structure.4

The scientists found that at multiple hier-

archical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell

clusters (ganglion), and even at the individ-

ual cell level, the positioning of neural units

achieved a goal that human engineers strive

for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect

minimizing of connection costs among all

the system’s components.

When the researchers studied a

seemingly simple microscopic soil worm

called a nematode, they found the same

level of efficiency. From among 40 mil-

lion possible network layouts of ganglia

in the nematode’s nervous system, they

found that each ganglion placement pro-

duced the least possible total connection

length. Even the positioning of individual

nematode neurons was thoroughly opti-

mized. Similar results were obtained for

datasets on the positioning of entire brain


The Human Brain Is “Beyond Belief”

basic on/off switches—but nothing could

be further from the truth since the brain

acts more like a quantum computer than a

digital computer. Just one synapse alone can

contain about 1,000 molecular-scale micro-

processor units acting in a quantum com-

puting environment. An average healthy hu-

man brain contains some 200 billion nerve

cells connected to one another through hun-

dreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in

perspective, one of the researchers revealed

that the study’s results showed a single hu-

man brain has more information processing

units than all the computers, routers, and

Internet connections on Earth.1

Phenomenal Processing Speed

As is typical of researchers bogged

down in an evolutionary mindset where

the complexity of living systems is routinely

underestimated, the processing speed of the

brain had been greatly underrated. In a new

research study, scientists found the brain is

10 times more active than previously be-

lieved.6,7 In this project, scientists discovered

that the branched projections of neurons

(dendrites) are not merely passive conduits

but are electrically active in animal brains

and generate nearly 10 times more electrical

spikes than the main body of the neuron cell

(called a soma).

These new results overturned the

long-held belief that electrical spikes in the

soma are the primary way in which the

mental processes of perception, learning,

and memory formation occur. While the so-

mas produce all-or-nothing spikes of elec-

tricity like a digital signal, the dendrites are

hybrid systems performing both analog and

digital transactions. Once again, this is more

evidence of quantum computer-like brain

engineering operating at warp speed levels.

The large number of dendritic spikes also

means the brain has more than 100 times

the computational capabilities than was

previously believed. While humans are only

beginning to develop quantum computing

devices, the Creator engineered our brains

at a much more complicated, compact, and

efficient level at the beginning of creation.

Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity

Yet another recent discovery revealed

incredible levels of memory storage in the

human brain.8 Terry Sejnowski, a leading

scientist on the research paper, stated, “This

is a real bombshell in the field of neurosci-

ence.”9 Dr. Sejnowski perhaps also unwit-

tingly framed the results using designed-

based thinking when he explained:

We discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power. Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative esti-mates by a factor of 10 to at least a pet-abyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9

What a mighty Creator we have who

can engineer that much memory between

our ears. Nothing engineered by humans

even comes close.

Optimal Energy Efficiency

The brain is one of the most energy-

hungry organs in the human body, consum-

ing about 20% of the energy budget even

though it represents only about 2% of the

body’s mass.10 Despite this high-energy de-

mand, the brain operates with startling effi-

ciency—with no comparison among mod-

ern man-made devices. One Stanford scien-

tist who is helping develop computer brains

for robots calculated that a computer pro-

cessor functioning with the computational

capacity of the human brain would require

at least 10 megawatts to operate properly.

This is comparable to the output of a small

hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it

may seem, the human brain requires only

about 10 watts to function.11 A phenomenal

level of energy optimization engineering like

this can only be attributed to an infinitely

wise Creator.

Multidimensional Processing

One of the most daunting challenges

in neuroscience has been detecting the link

between brain structure and how it relates

to information processing. Brain cells com-

regions in humans and other mammals.

Vast Computational Power

In 2010, a group of Stanford Univer-

sity scientists published a new visualiza-

tion technique based on targeting indi-

vidual proteins involved in transmitting

electrical brain signals.5 This technology

allowed for previously unknown levels

of multidimensional assessment of syn-

apse complexity and diversity. Research-

ers discovered that a single synapse is like

a computer’s microprocessor containing

both memory-storage and information-

processing features. The previous oversim-

plified belief was that synapses acted like

“We found a world that we had

never imagined. There are tens

of millions of these objects

even in a small speck of the

brain, up through seven dimen-

sions. In some networks, we

even found structures with up

to eleven dimensions.”

municate and process information in a

completely different way than computer

networks, and the neurological data ap-

peared to be very chaotic, primarily because

scientists could not interpret them properly.

This lack of a clear link between neural cell

network structure and how information is

processed was a huge barrier to understand-

ing the brain’s functioning.

Recently, scientists made progress by

constructing three-dimensional graphs of

neural cell networks that more accurately

reflect the direction of information flow.12

To do so, they analyzed the graphs using

complex algebraic topology. Applying this

approach to a local network of neurons in

the neocortex region revealed a remarkably

intricate and previously undetected topol-

ogy of synaptic connectivity at multiple di-

mensions.

When the brain processes information

such as a thought or some other task, tem-

porary informationally interactive struc-

tures appear that consist of three-dimen-

sional groups of cells called cliques. These

structures communicate with each other

while that action is processed—just like a

group of people might briefly come together

in a clique to chat. When the neural process

concludes, the association disintegrates. But

most amazing are the specific geometric

structures called cavities that develop when

these cliques form. One of the researchers,

Ran Levi, stated, “The appearance of high-

dimensional cavities when the brain is pro-

cessing information means that the neurons

in the network react to stimuli in an ex-

tremely organized manner.” He continued:

It is as if the brain reacts to a stimu-lus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The pro-gression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sand-castle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13

He also said:

We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven di-mensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13

Biophoton Brain Communication

Not only does the brain work by

chemically generated electrical pulses, but

research is producing a growing amount

of evidence indicating photons (packets of

light) play an important role in the daily

function of brain cells as well.14,15 Much of

this evidence comes from observing cells in

the dark and evaluating the light photons

they produce as they work. In fact, data now

strongly indicate that many cells use light to

communicate. Prior to observing this, there

were ample indications that bacteria, plants,

and even kidney cells communicate with

light. It has been shown that rat brains lit-

erally light up due to the photons produced

by neurons and that spinal neurons can con-

duct light.

Neurons contain many light-sensitive

molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic,

pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and

aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochon-

dria machines that produce energy inside

cells contain several different light-respon-

sive molecules called chromophores. This

research suggests that light channeled by

filamentous cellular structures called micro-

tubules plays an important role in helping

to coordinate activities in different regions

of the brain. Because it is difficult to explain

electrical activity in the overall brain that

synchronizes over long distances, research-

ers now believe that light communication

aids the processing speed of the communi-

cations channels since photons move much

faster than electrical signals.

It’s overwhelmingly clear that evo-

lution as a theory has failed to explain the

complexity of the brain. It’s entirely unsup-

portable that this organ containing spectac-

ular levels of processing capacity, efficiency,

memory storage capabilities, up to 11 di-

mensions of structure for a single informa-

tion process, and dual electrical-photonic

communication could have evolved by sheer

chance. The brightest human engineers can-

not come up within anything close to this

level of ingenuity.

The great stumbling block for Darwin-

ian evolution is explaining how a multitude

of features could simultaneously coalesce to

form a unified, functional biological system.

Obviously, the human brain did not evolve

by the progressive addition of one factor at a

time as postulated by evolution. The brain’s

efficiency, power, and complexity not only

defy any explanation that relies on chance,

but also points directly to an omnipotent

and all-wise Creator.

References1. Moore, E. A. Human brain has more switches than all com-

puters on Earth. CNET. Posted on cnet.com November 17, 2010, accessed July 7, 2017.

2. Osborne, H. Brain Architecture: Scientists Discover 11 Dimensional Structures That Could Help Us Understand How the Brain Works. Newsweek. Posted on newseek.com June 12, 2017.

3. Cherniak, C. 1994. Component Placement Optimization in the Brain. The Journal of Neuroscience. 14 (4): 2418-2427.

4. The “save wire” principle involves the minimization of con-nections between a system’s interconnected parts in order to reduce costs.

5. Micheva, K. D. et al. 2010. Single-Synapse Analysis of a Diverse Synapse Population: Proteomic Imaging Methods and Markers. Neuron. 68 (4): 639-653.

6. Moore, J. J. et al. 2017. Dynamics of cortical dendritic mem-brane potential and spikes in freely behaving rats. Science. 355 (6331): eaaj1497.

7. Gordon, D. Brain is 10 times more active than previously measured, UCLA researchers find. UCLA news release. Posted on newsroom.ucla.edu March 9, 2017.

8. Bartol, T. M. et al. 2015. Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity. eLife. 4: e10778.

9. Memory Capacity of Brain Is 10 Times More Than Previ-ously Thought. Salk News. Posted on salk.edu January 20, 2016.

10. Herculano-Houzel, S. 2011. Scaling of Brain Metabolism with a Fixed Energy Budget per Neuron: Implications for Neuronal Activity, Plasticity and Evolution. PLOS ONE. 6 (3): e17514.

11. Hsu, J. How Much Power Does The Human Brain Require To Operate? Popular Science. Posted on popsci.com Novem-ber 6, 2009.

12. Reimann, M. W. et al. 2017. Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. 11 (48).

13. Osborne, Brain Architecture: Scientists Discover 11 Dimen-sional Structures.

14. Rahnama, M. et al. 2010. Emission of Mitochondrial Bio-photons and their Effect on Electrical Activity of Mem-brane via Microtubules. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. 10 (1): 65-88.

15. The Puzzling Role of Biophotons in the Brain. MIT Technology Re-view. Posted on technologyreview.com December 17, 2010.

Dr. Tomkins is Director of Life Sci-ences at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University.


BACK TO GENESIS

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STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH

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RESEARCH

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IMPACT

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APOLOGETICS

STEWARDSHIP

CREATION Q & A

RESEARCH


J A K E H E B E R T , P h . D .BACK TO GENESIS

IMPACT

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RESEARCH

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APOLOGETICS

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RESEARCH

Evolutionary scientists recently

announced that fossils from

Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dated

at around 300,000 years old, are

the oldest Homo sapiens fossils ever discov-

ered.1 This claim is based on

the shape of a skull and the

presence of stone tools at the

site. This represents a potential

rewrite to the human evolu-

tion story that pushes back the

origin of “modern” humans

by 100,000 years. It would

also suggest that the “cradle of

civilization” included the en-

tire African continent rather

than just eastern Africa, as long

claimed by evolutionists.

Even the pro-evolution

magazine Scientific American

acknowledged that these Mo-

roccan fossils “mess up” the

accepted human evolution

story.2 Why?

Secular paleoanthropologists have

found similar stone tools at other African

sites, but in the absence of accompanying

fossils, they assumed the tools belonged to

an older, not-quite-fully-human species. If

evolutionists accept the Jebel Irhoud fossils

as fully human, it would mean these other

sites may have been occupied by genuine

people as well. Likewise, evolutionists think

that other fossils from Israel could be the

same age as the Jebel Irhoud fossils,3 despite

having what they consider to be somewhat

“primitive” features. This means that evolu-

tionists may have mistakenly labeled other

genuinely human fossils as primitive due

to their unusual anatomical characteristics.4

Thus, evolutionists would need to re-evalu-

ate their earlier assessments of these fossils.

This would not be the first rewrite of

the evolutionary story. Purported missing

links are regularly announced with much

fanfare. But they are invariably debunked,

only to be replaced by other equally dubious

“ape-man” candidates. An entire parade of

these missing links has come and gone: Pilt-

down Man, Nebraska Man, Neanderthals,

Lucy, Ramapithecus, Ida, etc. None of them

have stood the test of time. Given evolution-

ists’ abysmal track record, why should any-

one take their claims seriously?4 Evidence

for human evolution seems to exist only in

evolutionists’ imaginations.5

That no purported missing link has

withstood scrutiny is consistent with Gen-

esis. Since God created living things to re-

produce only after their kinds (Genesis 1:24-

25), apes have always been apes, and people

have always been people.

Despite the inflated ages secular scien-

tists have assigned to these genuine human

fossils, they are the remains of people who

lived after the confusion of tongues and dis-

persion from Babel several thousand years

ago (Genesis 11:1-9).

Division of labor before they were

scattered would mean that few, if any, of the

dispersed people would have retained all

their society’s accumulated technological

know-how. Much of this knowledge would

have been lost, with each fam-

ily having to begin civiliza-

tion anew with a limited skill

set. Any iron tools they had

would have eventually worn

out, likely necessitating the use

of stone tools early on. During

the post-Flood Ice Age, some

families would have found

shelter in caves (Job 30:5-6).

They would have hunted big

game and buried their dead in

cave dwellings (Genesis 23:11),

as the Neanderthals—genuine

members of the human fam-

ily6—are known to have done.

As the Ice Age ended hundreds

of years later, people built

more permanent settlements and civi-

lizations.

The answer to the question of human

origins is found not in evolutionists’ mental

projections and ever-changing evolutionary

story but in the divinely inspired Genesis

history—the real story of mankind.

References1. Hublin, J.-J. et al. 2017. New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Mo-

rocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature. 546 (7657): 289-292.

2. Wong, K. Ancient Fossils from Morocco Mess Up Modern Human Origins. Scientific American. Posted on scientifi-camerican.com June 8, 2017, accessed July 27, 2017.

3. Ghosh, P. ‘First of our kind’ found in Morocco. BBC News. Posted on bbc.com June 7, 2017, accessed June 27, 2017.

4. Coppedge, D. F. Don’t Trust Scientists Who Were Wrong; Fire Them. Creation Evolution Headlines. Posted on crev.info June 25, 2017, accessed June 27, 2017.

5. Guliuzza, R. J. 2017. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Nean-derthals Were Subhuman in Imagination Only. Acts & Facts. 46 (1): 17-19.

6. Thomas, B. Neanderthal Men Were Modern Men. Creation Sci-ence Update. Posted on ICR.org December 18, 2008, accessed July 12, 2017.

Dr. Hebert is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.

A composite reconstruction of the Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. The images are based on micro-computed tomo-graphic scans. Image credit: Copyright © 2017 Philipp Gunz, MPI/EVA Leipzig. Adapted for use in accordance with federal copy-right (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder.

Human Evolution StoryThe Ever-Evolving

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | A C T S & F A C T SA C T S & F A C T S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 714

Editor’s note: Prominent San Diego engineer and industrialist Lee Huntington was an ICR Board member for over two decades. This ar-ticle describes his creation journey.

Lee Huntington graduated from

high school in time for the United

States’ entrance into World War II.

He helped build B-24 bombers at

Convair in San Diego, but at the war’s end he

was eager to continue his education. He es-

pecially wanted to be a mechanical engineer

and chose to attend the University of Cali-

fornia in Berkeley, which had a great science

reputation.

As someone intent on entering the

science research education field, he wanted

to make sure everything he studied was true

and accurate. He was also determined that

nothing in his studies would be based on

conjecture—everything must have an accu-

rate foundation. Science and truth, he felt,

should be close companions.

During the early days of his time at

the university, Lee volunteered to work on

various science experiments. His first proj-

ect was directed by Dr. Ernest Lawrence, a

Nobel Prize winner in physics and a profes-

sor at Berkeley. Other volunteer assignments

were in the field of thermodynamics, one of

which was to measure the heat transfer and

design in special refrigerated boxcar walls.

After Lee graduated with his mechani-

cal engineering degree, he served a tour in

the U.S. Marines. At the tour’s conclusion,

he moved back to Berkeley with the goal of a

master’s degree in science. His work focused

on better measurements for the human

body’s comfort in dealing with radiation

and convection.

Lee moved to Los Angeles and began

work in engineering design for commercial

air conditioning. The manufacture and use

of this equipment was fairly new at the time.

He later relocated to San Diego to start his

own engineering business. The new venture

often offered challenges. One such challenge

involved working with British Petroleum

(BP) on Alaska’s North Slope in Prudhoe

Bay. Lee’s company was given the task of

helping build power plants.

An interesting event occurred while

Lee was up on the North Slope. The BP chief

engineer gave him a handful of wood chips.

He said workers had discovered them as

they drilled up to 15,000 feet under the icy

ground surface. Sometime later, Lee met Dr.

Henry M. Morris in San Diego, and he told

Lee those wood chips were likely from the

Ice Age.

With his keen interest in science, Lee

was determined to gain a greater under-

standing of the creation story. He attended

a presentation by Dr. Walter Lammerts, a

scientist and president of the Creation Re-

search Society and a leader in the represen-

tation of scientific creationism. In 1970, this

thoughtful Ph.D. introduced Lee to a book

called The Genesis Flood by Dr. Henry M.

Morris and Dr. John Whitcomb, and even-

tually Dr. Lammerts introduced him to Dr.

Morris.

A short time after that meeting, Lee

and his lovely first wife, Alice, attended a

college-level course taught by Dr. Mor-

ris. This class was all about science and the

worldwide Flood as described in Genesis.

Dr. Morris had been the head of the Civil

Engineering Department at Virginia Poly-

technic. This university was and still is one of

the top engineering schools in our country.

Lee Huntington’s Creation Story

“There is a vacuum of

creation information in

our country and in our

world.”

Dr. Morris was a very skilled and intelligent

teacher. What a privilege it was for Lee and

his wife to attend a Genesis class under him.

What students learned in the class led them

to examine age dating and other important

questions and helped them begin putting

together science and the creation story.

“Purpose in life” had always been

an important consideration for Lee, and

he searched for other respected scientists

with different specialty skills who had been

studying the same questions. He ran into

many like-minded scientists who were ex-

tremely helpful in his quest.

One day in the early 1980s, Lee joined

Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Henry Morris III for

lunch in El Cajon, a city in San Diego County.

They asked Lee to join the Board of Directors

of the Institute for Creation Research.

Lee continued to read all of the litera-

ture he could find on creation from a bib-

lical and scientific point of view. In joining

the ICR Board, he would meet men from all

over the world who shared this belief. More

and more young people were coming into

the fold—accepting and studying the idea

of creation as being a reality. This direction

was a monumental change in the standard

scientific belief system. Could our world be

a much younger world (a newer creation)

than was previously thought?

Lee was now faced with the same di-

lemma that Dr. Henry M. Morris had when

he was a smart young graduate. What is the

real truth for us as science students? In Lee’s

own words:

There are two laws of thermodynamics. These two laws have been accepted by science for many years. They were in-troduced to me during my engineering classes at U.C. Berkeley, and these laws seemed to conflict with old-age teach-ing. We were told that our universe was so very old, and now perhaps we were mistaken. The second law tells us every-thing is running down—especially the availability of energy. Everything had been young at some point as described in Genesis, and now there appears to be an end point that is sooner than we had been led to believe.

Does the Bible give us a real history of

our civilization? More than that, isn’t it likely that its history is written by a Master Teacher—our very scientific Creator? Was our Lord the real Master Designer, Creator, and Engineer, or do we toss this aside?

Dr. Henry M. Morris III and his team of world-class scientists have taken a big step in helping churches and schools understand creation. Many of us have now come to embrace what we believe is the most accurate explanation as to who we are and where we are going.

The whole Morris family is dedicated to carrying this banner into the future. Dr. Henry Morris III, ICR’s CEO, as-sisted by his brother, Dr. John Morris, is carrying on the leadership for this mission. There is a vacuum of creation information in our country and in our world. I believe our Christian churches and schools need to be taught biblical creation as the most accurate explana-tion for new young scientists and for the advancement of our churches and school systems.

My commitment is to continue to help carry this banner and support ICR.


“I believe our Christian churches and schools need

to be taught biblical creation as the most accurate

explanation for new young scientists and for the

advancement of our churches and school systems.”

“The Genesis Flood is as timely, thought-pro-

voking, and helpful as ever. A tour de force

and a must-read resource for pastors, teach-

ers, scientists, and anyone who is troubled

by the conflict between the biblical account

of creation and the ever-changing claims of

modern evolutionary theory.”

— Dr. John MacArthur,

Pastor of Grace Community Church

Over 50 years ago, Dr. Morris and Dr. Whit-

comb joined together to write a controversial

book that sparked dialogue and debate on

science and the Bible — culminating in what

would be called the birth of the modern cre-

ation science movement.

The Genesis Flood

$12.99 $16.99 reg. BTGFFAE


In the heat of July and August, work continued inside and out

on ICR’s Discovery Center for Science and Earth History. In-

side, with the installation of heating and air conditioning sys-

tems and plumbing for the exhibit hall, and outside with drill-

ing and pile-driving piers for the planetarium’s foundation, as well as

laying the groundwork for the parking area and landscaping.

Help Us Finish the ICR Discovery Center

Please help ICR reach generations to come with evidence that

confirms the Bible. As we build the superstructure, we are still

raising funds for the interior exhibits. Your gift will be put to ef-

fective use to point people to the truth of our Creator, the Lord

Jesus Christ. Please visit ICR.org/DiscoveryCenter

Pile-driving equipment digging for pier placement for the Discovery Center’s planetarium and auditorium foundation.

CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

To help document the construction progress of ICR’s Discovery Center,Beck Architects placed an OxBlue time-lapse camera on a 60-foot poleand programmed it to take a picture every 10 minutes 24 hours a day.The big crane arrived on site August 1, 2017.

Future Discovery Center parking area and outdoor park with coveredpavilions for families and tour groups.

Installing air ducts and plumbing to prepare the exhibit hall.


Does Darwin deserve all the homage he gets? After all, the

idea of evolution didn’t originate with him. Others be-

fore him recognized that less “fit” animals die, and his

book on human evolution, The Descent of Man, wasn’t

groundbreaking either.

Yet, Darwin was a profound forerunner in a vital area of bio-

logical inquiry. He pioneered a way to conceptualize nature as the

creative agent of change for organisms.1 Stephen Jay Gould’s The

Structure of Evolutionary Theory is likely unmatched in chronicling

the history of evolutionary intellectual discourse. He lauds Darwin’s

trailblazing approach:

Darwin’s theory, in strong and revolutionary contrast, presents a first “externalist” account of evolution….Darwin overturned all previous traditions by thus granting the external environment a causal and controlling role in the direction of evolutionary change.2

Gould chose his words carefully, for he prefaced his conclusion

by saying:

I proceed in this way for a principled reason, and not merely as a convenience. All major evolutionary theories before Darwin…[are] presenting a fundamentally “internalist” account, based upon intrinsic and predictable patterns set by the nature of living systems, for development or “unfolding” through time.2

What does Gould mean by “externalist” versus “internalist” ac-

counts? It may be useful to let some of the most perceptive evolution-

ists speak in their own words on this issue. Listen carefully and learn

how Darwin’s externalism credits nature for effects that are normally

the result of intelligent agency. The evolutionists’ words make clear

why we need a design-based theory of adaptability that uses engineer-

ing principles to explain the specified complexity and internal capaci-

ties that allow intelligently designed organisms to adapt to changing

environments.

Environments Exercise Agency: The Replacement to

Intelligent Agency

According to Gould, a key observation needs to be explained:

Organisms are well designed for their immediate modes of life—and intricate adaptation implies an agent of design, either an in-telligent creator who made organisms by fiat as an expression of his wisdom and benevolence, or a natural principle of evolution that yields such adjustment between organism and environment as a primary result of its operation.3

After evolution prevailed, debates centered on internal mecha-

nisms versus external forces as the impetus for change. Early in his

career, Gould discussed this debate:

What is the motor of organic change? More specifically, how are life and the earth related? Does the external environment and its alterations set the course of change, or does change arise from some independent and internal dynamic within organisms themselves?4

He categorized externalists as holding “that evolution proceeded

when changes in the physical environment established selective pres-

sures for new adaptation….I will refer to the belief in external control as

environmentalist and to claims for an inherent cause of change as inter-

nalist.” Externalists, therefore, “identified the agent of change not within

organisms themselves, but in a fluctuating external environment.”4

Synonyms for externalism are functionalism, selectionism, and

adaptationism. Internalism, which holds that causality for biological

function is internal, may also be called formalism, a category that in-

cludes structuralism.

The divide between these positions isn’t trivial. Gould notes that

“the designation of one principle or the other as the causal founda-

tion of biology virtually defines the position of any scientist towards

the organic world and its causes of order,” which continues unabated

R A N D Y J . G U L I U Z Z A , P . E . , M . D .

ENGINEERED ADAPTABILITY SERIES

Adaptability via Nature or Design?

What Evolutionists Say


since “this dichotomy continues to define a major issue in modern

evolutionary debates.”5

Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin incisively describes how

Darwin’s externalistic approach fundamentally changed the way bi-

ologists see organisms:

For Darwin, the external world, the environment, acting on the organism was the cause of the form of organisms. The environ-ment, the external world with its autonomous properties, was the subject and the organism was, again, the object acted upon….It is from this view of environment as the cause of organisms that the entire corpus of modern biology arises. We cannot appreciate fully the nature of the change in biology wrought by Mendel and Darwin unless we understand the historical importance of the objectification of the organism.6

Science philosopher Trevor Pearce notes:

The new dichotomy of organism and environment proved both useful and portable. By the 1890s, it was already operating as an essential framing device in scientific and philosophical argu-ments. In biology and psychology, the environment was seen as a causal agent, highlighting questions of organismic variation and plasticity.7

Another theoretician, Marta Linde Medina, refines the view.

The term “internalist” makes reference to the nature of the origi-nating organizing principle of biological form (in true “external-ism” the originating organizing principle is imposed from with-out, regardless of how it may become inscribed in the organism).8

Externalists designate certain conditions as “selective pressures”

they believe act upon trait variability conferred by genetic variability

as a result of mutation. However, a prominent evolutionist percep-

tively characterized this non-quantifiable “pressure” and the “work” it

is visualized as doing as “a metaphorical external agent.”9

Non-Darwinian biochemist Michael Denton explained how

externalists see all traits as “the result of specific adaptations built ad-

ditively by selection during the course of evolution, to serve particular

functional ends, ends that are imposed by the environment and that

are external to the organism itself.”10

The overarching premise that active environments mold passive

“objectified” organisms—meaning that nature as a substitute intel-

ligent agent can create the diversity of life—seems to elude most evo-

lutionary biologists. In an exclamation turned to lament, Gould says:

I regard this passage [Darwin’s concluding paragraph in his chapter titled “Difficulties on Theory”] as among the most im-portant and portentous in the entire Origin, for these words embody Darwin’s ultimate decision to construct a functionalist theory based on adaptation as primary….Yet this passage, which should be emblazoned into the consciousness of all evolutionary biologists, has rarely been acknowledged or quoted.11

People fixate on “no Designer needed” but don’t recognize how

that assumption traces back to the profound shift in understanding

organisms that Darwin initiated.

Passive Modeling Clay, Not Engineered Problem-Solving Entities

In contrast to the problem-solving capabilities engineers de-

sign into auto-adaptable man-made machines, externalism posits

organisms as clay that is passively molded by the environment. Two

researchers summarize Darwin’s externalism:

[Darwin] accepted the view that the environment directly instructs the organism how to vary, and he proposed a mechanism for in-heriting those changes….The organism was like modeling clay, and remolding of the clay meant that each of the billions of little grains was free to move a little bit in any direction to generate new form….If an organism needed a wing, an opposable thumb, longer legs, webbed feet, or placental development, any of these would emerge under the proper selective conditions, with time.12

Linde Medina elaborates:

As a result, organisms are as passive as the matter that forms them: “Surprisingly, in spite of language like “struggle for existence”, for Darwin, organisms are far more passive and less tenacious in their grip on life; they simply vary—spontaneously. Natural se-lection does all the work of adapting populations of descendants to their changing circumstances” (Lenoir 1987, p. 27).13

Gould adds that biology frames causation within an “explana-

tion that treats organisms as inert substances, buffeted by an external

environment and reacting immediately to physical stress without any

counteracting, intrinsic control or even temporary resistance….i.e.,

stimulus leads to immediate and passive response.”14

Environments Cause Arrival and Survival of the Fittest

Concluding a chapter titled “The Environment as a Normal

Agent in Producing Phenotypes,” developmental biologist Scott

Gilbert said:

Environmental factors such as temperature, diet, physical stress, the presence of predators, and crowding can gener-ate a phenotype that is suited for that particular environ-ment….Thus, in addition to helping decide the surviv-al of the fittest, the environment is also important in formulating the arrival of the fittest.15

Building off of environment agency,

he added, “The study of developmental

plasticity points to something quite un-

expected in evolutionary theory: that the

environment not only selects variation,

it helps construct variation,” which “has

shown that the environment can instruct

which phenotype can be produced from

the genetic repertoire in the nucleus”

and thus “the environment

is giving instructive in-

formation as well as

selective pressures.”15

ENGINEERED ADAPTABILITY SERIES


A Hardened Externalistic Status Quo Hinders Research

Many new scientific discoveries, however, don’t seem to fit with

externalism, which has resulted in vocal calls for reform. One reform-

er, Kevin Laland of the University of St. Andrews, describes the one-

way thinking of externalistic causations in biology:

If correct, this form of evolutionary causation is unidirectional: it starts in the external environment (i.e., with selection) and ends with an adaptive change in the organism (i.e., with modified migratory behaviour). Unidirectional causation has historically been the default assumption within evolutionary biology.16

Denton agrees: “This is, of course, the currently prevailing and

mainstream view. All Darwinists, and hence the great majority of

evolutionary biologists, are functionalist by definition….The English-

speaking world adhered to some version of functionalism for so long

that it is inconceivable to most English-speaking biologists that liv-

ing things might contain a significant degree of order that arises from

basic internal physical constraints,” an idea “very alien” to them.17 Ac-

cordingly, Gould devoted a large section in Structure titled “Harden-

ing” to describe this mental sclerosis.

Aware of these anomalies, Lewontin says, “Darwin’s view of or-

ganisms as passive objects moulded by the external force of natural

selection [has] become increasingly in contradiction with the known

facts of developmental and population biology.” Yet, due to harden-

ing, “these well-known facts seem, however, to have made no impact

on evolutionary theorists who continue to speak [circularly] about

selection for a character and about genes that are selected because

they produce that character.”18

For example, recent findings show that many organisms detect

changed conditions and self-adjust within their genome through epi-

genetic modifications. But hardened externalists interpret even these

internal mechanisms as ultimately due to external causation, as one

MIT professor illustrates:

But when we speak of Natural Selection as having programmed the human genome, I want to emphasize that it is precisely the capacities to respond and adapt for which Natural Selection has programmed the human genome.19

Getting Past “Entangled Causations”

Discoveries of pervasive internal mechanisms within

intrinsically adaptable organisms frustrates “hardened”

evolutionists. Lewontin observes that when they try to

shoehorn such mechanisms into Darwin’s externalistic

ideas, they are “stalled by their attempt to use outdated

concepts to confront a rich phenomenology to which

these concepts clearly do not apply.” He con-

cludes that “it is a tribute

to the power of long-held

ideology that the study of

evolution continues to lean so heav-

ily on an impoverished view of the relation

between gene, environment, and organism.”20

The reflex explanation for ubiquitous internal mechanisms is

that causality must obviously be both external and internal. But this

view, per another reform advocate, is leading to “deeply entangled”

causal explanations.21 Darwin had far more expertise than his dis-

ciples in intelligent design theory. He understood the illogic of “dual

root” causes and, more importantly, that in a naturalistic worldview,

final causality must trace back to nature.

Darwin hit his precise target by cleverly crediting nature with

molding creatures even though the systems that produce variable

traits, reproduction, and inheritance reside internally. If these func-

tions of creature’s systems truly do correspond to those of human-

engineered auto-adaptable entities, then, by definition, the engineer-

ing causality is internal. Relationships to anything external are enabled

by internal systems.

The answer to Darwin’s externalism is intelligent design. We

should start by identifying specified information and irreducible

complexity,22 then utilize engineering principles and illuminate the

full engineering causality of the auto-adaptability that yields incred-

ibly active, problem-solving organisms. The rest of this article series

will focus on that goal.

References1. Darwin even compared nature to the work of a skilled human animal breeder. Not only is this a

false comparison since nature is not an intelligent agent, but even skilled humans cannot cause a dog to turn into cat or any other non-dog creature. More importantly, neither Darwin nor any other scientist since his time has ever found a viable evolutionary mechanism that would produce new complex adaptive traits.

2. Gould, S. J. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Har-vard University Press, 161-162.

3. Ibid, 251.4. Gould, S. J. 1977. Eternal Metaphors of Palaeontology. In Patterns of Evolution as Illustrated by

the Fossil Record. A. Hallam, ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2-3, 14. Emphasis in original.5. Gould, Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 252.6. Lewontin, R. C. 1983. Gene, Organism and Environment. In Evolution from Molecules to Man.

D. S. Bendall, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 273-274.7. Pearce, T. 2014. The Origins and Development of the Idea of Organism-Environment Interac-

tion. In Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences. G. Barker, E. Desjardins, and T. Pearce, eds. New York: Springer, 13-14.

8. Linde Medina, M. 2011. Reply to the Comments on “Natural Selection and Self-Organization: A Deep Dichotomy in the Study of Organic Form.” Ludus Vitalis. 19 (36): 387.

9. Reid, R. G. B. 2007. Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 393.

10. Denton, M. J. 2013. The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selection-ism. BIO-Complexity. (3): 2.

11. Gould, Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 251.12. Kirschner, M. W. and J. C. Gerhart. 2005. The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 3, 31. Emphasis added.13. Linde Medina, Reply to the Comments, 389.14. Gould, Eternal Metaphors of Palaeontology, 21-22.15. Gilbert, S. F. and D. Epel. 2009. Ecological Developmental Biology: Integrating Epigenetics, Medi-

cine, and Evolution. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 33, 369, 370, 407. Emphasis in original.16. Laland, K. N. et al. 2015. The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and

predictions. Proceedings Of the Royal Society B. 282 (1813): 20151019. Emphasis added.17. Denton, M. Two Views of Biology: Structuralism vs. Functionalism. Evolution News & Science

Today. Posted on evolutionnews.org February 3, 2016, accessed May 24, 2017. Emphasis in original.

18. Lewontin, Gene, Organism and Environment, 275, 278.19. Fox Keller, E. 2014. From gene action to reactive genomes. The Journal of Physiology. 592 (11):

2428.20. Lewontin, Gene, Organism and Environment, 275, 284.21. Comments by Sonia Sultan in Pigliucci, M. The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and causality

in biology. Footnotes to Plato. Posted on platofootnote.wordpress.com May, 15 2017, accessed May 15, 2017.

22. An irreducibly complex system is one made up of several interacting parts in which the removal of one part would disrupt the function of the whole.

Dr. Guliuzza is ICR’s National Representative. He earned his M.D. from the University of Minnesota, his Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and served in the U.S. Air Force as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Guliuzza is also a registered Professional Engineer.


The complexity of

the vertebrate eye

disturbed Darwin, but he

supposed it might have originated

millions of years ago through a series of small steps that

started with a rudimentary light-sensitive spot. Today,

evolutionary theory claims that all eyes found in the ani-

mal world somehow evolved independently and can

supposedly “be traced from a simple ancestral patch of

photoreceptor cells.”1 Those same authors stated, “There

appears to have been a single evolutionary origin of light-

sensitive cells.”2

Non-Darwinists ask, “Just how simple would this ancestral

patch of cells be?” Since we cannot go back in deep evolutionary time

to investigate these supposed structures, we must work with what we

have today. Light-sensitive cells have a protein photoreceptor called

microbial rhodopsin that absorbs photons—units of light. Rhodopsin

molecules are embedded in a plasma membrane and would have had

to evolve via blind chance, if evolutionists are correct.

Rhodopsin is found in Eukaryota (organisms whose cells have

a nucleus), and single-celled Bacteria and Archaea. Rhodopsin mol-

ecules have ion channels as well as light-driven proton pumps. Could

such sophisticated channels and pumps be the product of random

evolutionary forces?

When a photon strikes a light-sensitive receptor cell, it causes

immediate chemical changes in the rhodopsin molecules called

photobleaching. This instant change results in a depolarizing event

termed a receptor potential. This is simultaneously converted into an

electrical signal, i.e., a current flow. Each signal has a destination such

as a nerve net, or a concentration of ganglia (a small mass of nervous

tissue including cell bodies and synapses), via a neural projection

where the stimulus is then processed. This “simple” patch of photo-

receptor cells is actually extraordinarily complicated!

Where did rhodopsin come from? “The origin of the first op-

sins is a bit murky,” states a University of California Santa Cruz ge-

nomics site.3 It looks like rhodopsin has always been rhodopsin, as

predicted by creationists.

Today, the “simplest” eyes, called pigment spot ocelli or eyespots,

are generally found in very complex animals such as sea stars (star-

fish), flatworms, and jellyfish.4

Larvae of marine invertebrates—worms, sponges, jellyfish—have the simplest eyes that exist. They consist of no more than two cells: a photoreceptor cell and a pigment cell. These minimal eyes, called eyespots, resemble the ‘proto-eyes’ suggested by Charles Darwin as the first eyes to appear in animal evolution.5

Is an eyespot automatically simple? An

evolutionary zoology textbook states:

Eyespots of astonishingly advanced organization appear even in some unicellular forms. That of the di-noflagellate, Nematodinium, bears

a lens, a light-gathering chamber, and a photoreceptive pig-ment cup—all developed within a single-celled organism.6

Despite evolutionary assumptions that “simple” eyes in

certain organisms reflect the eye’s early evolutionary development,

creationists maintain that invertebrates such as those listed above do

not require the more complex eye anatomy found in other inverte-

brates (like octopus and squid) and vertebrates. They do not need

more intricate eyes in order to do what they were created to do, nor

are their eyes necessarily primitive.

Euglena, for example, is a single-celled flagellate with over 800

species that contains chloroplasts for photosynthesis but can also

feed by autotrophy (the self-manufacture of food from inorganic

substances). An evolutionist described the Euglena’s photoreceptor

structure as “highly ordered”:

The paraflagellar body—the photoreceptor—is a highly ordered crystalline lamellar structure. Optical diffraction of the electron micrographs and resulting filtered images of the paraflagellar body suggest that it is formed of rods in a helical arrangement.7

No matter the structure, physiology, or overall function of

a visual system—either in a “simple” marine larva or the primitive

“proto-eyes” imaginatively suggested by Darwin—the systems are

incredibly complex and their design shouts creation.

References1. Taylor, M. et al. 2018. Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections, 9th ed. New York: Pearson,

310.2. Ibid.3. Opsin evolution: origins of opsins. UCSC Genome Browser Wiki. Posted on genomewiki.

ucsc.edu. 4. Sherwin, F. 2011. “Relatively Simple.” Acts & Facts. 40 (7): 175. Uncovering secrets of life in the ocean. European Molecular Biology

Laboratory news release. Posted on www.embl.de November 20, 2008.6. Hickman, C. et al. 2011. Integrated Principles of Zoology, 15th ed. New

York: McGraw Hill, 749.7. Wolken, J. J. 1977. Euglena: The Photoreceptor System for Phototaxis.

Journal of Protozoology. 24 (4): 518. Mr. Sherwin is Research Associate, Senior Lecturer, and Science Writer, and earned his M.A. in zoology from University of Northern Colorado.


F R A N K S H E R W I N , M . A .

MADE IN HIS IMAGE (DVD)$34.99 reg. $39.99 DMIHI

Made in His Image will inspire audi-ences by looking at the human

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Do pointed questions help

people think? Good ques-

tions can make them

curious and open

their minds to things they might

not have considered. When people express

doubts about the truth of the Bible, asking

the right questions can help guide them to-

ward the right answers—biblical answers.1

Consider how God Himself often used

questions to help humans think about im-

portant matters and look at their real mo-

tivations. Immediately after Adam sinned—

with help from his helpmate—God asked a

series of questions:

Then the lorD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the gar-den, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And the LorD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”2

Obviously, God knew the answer to

every question He posed to Adam and Eve,

so God wasn’t seeking unknown informa-

tion. So, why did He use questions?

Questions hold us in suspense until we

find what we believe are good answers, so

questions can motivate us to think about and

learn specific information in a manner that’s

engaging and almost automatic. Questions

are great educational tools because they

prompt us to recognize facts on particu-

lar topics. When we hear a question on

a subject important or interesting to us,

we want to know the answer.

Consider a few questions

asked by the Lord Jesus Christ to

guide and direct the thinking of

His hearers:

“Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?”3

“For if you believed

Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not be-lieve his writings, how will you believe My words?”4

When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accus-ers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”5

Accordingly, asking questions can be

very helpful in apologetics-oriented con-

versations. Consider how these questions

invite, if not trigger, analytical thinking:

Why are the evolutionists’ anticipated “missing links” still missing?6

Why do Darwinists use the term “natu-ral selection” to refer to creatures’ inter-actions with their nonliving geophysi-cal environment—something that

cannot think or make the kind of value judgments indispensable to any kind of

“selection”?7

Why does the real-world ice-core layer data fit the biblical record regarding Earth’s climate his-

tory, yet it clashes with the uniformitar-ian (evolutionist) assumptions about Earth’s history?8

Why do evolutionists continue to use such discredited ideas as vestigial or-gans and Haeckel’s “recapitulating” embryos?9

Why were evolutionists so easily fooled by the Piltdown Man hoax?10

Why do we need reliable witnesses to know about unique events of Earth’s past such as creation week events or the global Flood?11

Leading questions like these can guide

discussions with those who question—as

well as those who might not have been pay-

ing enough attention to have a question—

ultimately pointing those with “ears to hear”

in the right direction and aiming natural

curiosity toward relevant truth.

Can you think of some questions that

can point thinking people toward the right

answers?

References1. Not all questions are good questions, as Genesis 3:1 illus-

trates because Satan’s first question in the Garden of Eden was used to imply that God’s Word was untrustworthy.

2. Genesis 3:9-13.3. John 8:46.4. John 5:46-47.5. John 8:10.6. Morris, J. 2006. What’s a Missing Link? Acts & Facts. 35 (4);

Johnson, J. J. S. 2008. The Evidence of Nothing: The Silent Witness of Evolution’s Missing Links. Acts & Facts. 37 (4): 4-5.

7. Guliuzza, R. J. 2012. Darwin’s Sacred Imposter: Answering Questions about the Fallacy of Natural Selection. Acts & Facts. 41 (2): 12-15.

8. Hebert, J. 2016. Milankovitch Meltdown: Toppling an Iconic Old-Earth Argument, Part 2. Acts & Facts. 45 (12): 10-13.

9. Guliuzza, R. J. 2016. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Our Useful Appendix —Evidence of Design, Not Evolution. Acts & Facts. 45 (2): 12-14; Guliuzza, R. J. 2016. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Haeckel’s Embryos Born of Evolutionary Imagination. Acts & Facts. 45 (11): 16-18.

10. Guliuzza, R. J. 2015. Major Evolutionary Blunders: The Imaginary Piltdown Man. Acts & Facts. 44 (12): 12-14.

11. Johnson, J. J. S. Mystick Mystery: Scientists Investi-gate Connecticut’s Pequot War Battlefield. Answers in Genesis. Posted at an-swersingenesis.org July 8, 2015, accessed July 3, 2017. Dr. Johnson is As-sociate Professor of Apologetics and Chief Academic Officer at the Institute for Cre-ation Research.


J A M E S J . S . J O H N S O N , J . D . , T h . D .

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Using Pointed Questions

to Point to Answers


Scripture frequently uses agrarian images to emphasize the

effort necessary to bring people to Christ or disciple them

to maturity. Just as the farmer cannot expect a harvest un-

less the seed is first planted and nurtured, so too Christians

must sow and labor in the hearts of mankind before God will pro-

duce spiritual fruit (1 Corinthians 3:5-10). And as Paul often remind-

ed believers in the churches he founded, spiritual sowing and labor-

ing takes various forms and is accomplished in different stages. We

should always be looking for the opportunity to “do good to all, es-

pecially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10).

As we enter the final months of the year, this is an excellent

time to think about the giving opportunities available to you. If the

ICR ministry has blessed you and you would like to partner with us,

please consider the following ways to support ICR’s unique mission

of proclaiming the truth of creation and our Creator, the Lord Jesus

Christ. We welcome the opportunity to serve you. You can reach us at

800.337.0375 or [email protected].

✦ Cash Gifts. There is truth in the saying “Cash is king,” and there is

also no doubt cash gifts are the most versatile and helpful form of

support to ICR’s work. Gifts to ICR are fully tax-deductible, and

we would be grateful for the blessing of your financial support.

✦ Stock Owners. The stock market is roaring, and there

may be no better time to give appreciated stocks or mu-

tual fund shares to support ICR. Shares held for at

least one year can be gifted directly to us, providing

you with a full tax deduction at their current value

while paying no capital gains tax! Contact ICR and let

us help facilitate your gift, or visit

ICR.org/donate_stocks for ICR’s

brokerage information.

✦ IRA Owners. The IRA Charitable Rollover allows IRA owners

who are 70½ years or older to make gifts up to $100,000 each year

to ICR without declaring it as income. Not only are these popu-

lar gifts exempt from federal tax, they also count toward your re-

quired minimum withdrawal! Contact your IRA administrator to

take advantage of this special opportunity.

✦ Corporate Matching Gifts. Many companies match gifts by em-

ployees and retirees to tax-exempt organizations like ICR. With

matches typically made dollar-for-dollar, this is a superb oppor-

tunity to “sow bountifully” (2 Corinthians 9:6) by doubling the

value of gifts you are already making. Please check with your HR

department today to get started.

✦ Seniors. For supporters over 65, Charitable Gift Annuities pro-

vide the best guaranteed returns available today—typically 4.5 to

9%, depending on age. For as little as $10,000, an ICR gift annuity

will provide guaranteed income for life, a present tax deduction,

and a tax-free portion on future payments—benefits the secular

marketplace cannot match. If you would like to help ICR but still

need ongoing income, this option may be right for you. Not all

states qualify, so please contact us for a customized proposal.

✦ Government Employees. ICR is qualified to participate in the

following exclusive workplace giving programs only available to

government employees.

» Federal and Military Employees. U.S. military personnel and

federal government workers can support ICR via automatic

payroll deductions through the Combined Federal Campaign

(CFC). Our CFC identification number is 23095. You can find

us in the National/International section of your campaign bro-

chure when making your pledge this fall.

» State Employees in Texas and California. Similar to the CFC,

state employees in Texas and California can give directly to ICR

through their employee workplace campaigns.

Please consider designating the Institute for

Creation Research on your pledge form this

year.

Mr. Morris is Director of Donor Relations at the Insti tute for Creation Research.

H E N R Y M . M O R R I S I V

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P R A Y E R F U L L Y CONSIDER SUPPORTING ICR n G A L A T I A N S 6 : 9 - 1 0 n

Visit ICR.org/give and explore how you can support the vital work of ICR ministries. Or contact us at [email protected] or 800.337.0375 for personal assistance.

ICR is a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit ministry, and all gifts are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.

n Online Donationsn Stocks and Securitiesn IRA Giftsn Matching Gift Programs

T h r o u g hn CFC (Federal / Military Workers)n Gift Planning • Charitable Gift Annuities • Wills and Trusts

Opportunities to Sow with ICR

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Have a comment? Email us at [email protected] or write to

Editor, P. O. Box 59029, Dallas, Texas 75229.

Note: Unfortunately, ICR is not able to respond to all correspondence.


I love listening to the podcasts. I listen to

them all the time. Thanks for sharing them

on Google Play. I have been listening to them

from the oldest to the newest. Thank you!

— B. F.

These sounds bites are the bomb. Thanks for posting, ICR.

— T. R.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together

in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:13-14, ESV)

That means God assembled my DNA. He knew what

cancer I would get and when. And He knew precisely

what I would go through. And He was there to carry me

when the road got too tough for me.

— J. B.

As a medical transcriptionist who types operation notes,

rarely does a day go by that I don’t marvel at how

wonderfully made the human body is and the knowledge

God has given doctors to fix it!

— W. K. M.

What does this trend mean? It means that, unbelievably,

more people than ever are willing to believe the unscien-

tific claims that something came from nothing—that life

came from non-life.

— J. Y.

He didn’t bring me to Himself until I was 50; before then

I was totally entrenched in evolution. As a baby Christian,

and completely unchurched, I held to the gap theory be-

cause it was easier at that point. Before reading the cre-

ation account, I asked for wisdom—the answer was really

quite simple—He said it. If a professing Christian doesn’t

believe creation, they throw out all of His God-breathed

Word. I was wishy-washy until the truth was revealed.

— S. S.

Disbelief in creation is a symptom of disbelief in the

Scripture.

— K. L.

Like many other Christians, I took a journey to belief in

Genesis as history. I discovered through research and

logic that Genesis is true—[this understanding] didn’t

come overnight. But it did start with Dr. Richard Leakey

at a UCLA lecture admitting that Lucy was discovered in

two sections, in different layers, and several hundred feet

apart. He didn’t think it was the same fossil. Then Pilt-

down Man, Java Man, and Peking Man fell in succession.

— D. D.

To listen to ICR’s library of podcasts, visit ICR.org/Radio

I’m super excited for this [7/30/17 Ne-braska Solar Eclipse] seminar next week! I can honestly say that ICR and your Acts &

Facts publications are a big factor in me coming back to the Lord here recently.

— S. S.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together

in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:13-14, ESV)

P. O. Box 59029, Dallas, TX 75229

ICR.org

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acts facts - institute for creation research · jake hebert says, “the answer to the question of...

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